The applicant of this application proposed a technique to improve the mass productivity of a winding member and a winding assembly used for this type of rotating electrical machine in JP-A-2002-176752. In this prior art, a winding assembly of a rotating electrical machine includes plural winding combinations, and each of the winding combinations are constructed by combining two winding members. Each of the winding members is wound by continuously turning a wire rod so as to have a first straight part, a second straight part, a first turn part to connect the first and the second straight parts at their one sides, and a second turn part to connect the first and the second straight parts at the other sides. According to this prior art, as compared with a conventional manufacturing method of a winding member in which a number of conductor segments are joined to each other to manufacture a winding member, the mass productivity can be improved.
In this prior art, as shown in FIG. 8 thereof, there was proposed a manufacturing method in which a pair of plate-like winding cores are used to simultaneously and helically wind plural wire rods. Each of the pair of plate-like winding cores includes plural projections to restrict the plural wire rods at the outer periphery. By the method of using the plate-like winding cores, plural wire rods, for example, twelve wire rods are wound around the pair of plate-like winding cores and are sequentially folded, so that for example, twelve winding members can be simultaneously wound.
However, in the plate-like winding cores disclosed in this prior art, since the width between the plural projections provided at one side of the outer periphery and the plural projections provided at the other side is fixed, and the lengths of the first and the second straight parts are fixed by the width, it is difficult to change the lengths of the first and the second straight parts. In order to change the lengths of the first and the second straight parts, although plate-like winding cores with different widths are prepared, the change of the lengths of the first and the second straight parts is nevertheless limited.
In order to improve this disadvantage, the present applicant proposed an improved prior invention. This improved prior invention will be simply called the prior invention. An application for this prior invention was filed in Japan on Sep. 4, 2002 as Japanese Patent Application No. 2002-259136, was filed in the United States on Feb. 6, 2003 as U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/359,095, was filed in Germany on Jun. 5, 2003 as German Patent Application No. 10325617.2, and was filed in France on Jul. 4, 2003 as French Patent Application No. 0350297.
In this prior invention, a center shaft and a forming roller rotating around the center shaft are disposed on a turn plane, a wire rod is put in a forming gap between the center shaft and the forming roller, and the forming roller is rotated around the center shaft, so that the rod wire is turned.
In this prior invention, when the wire rod is supplied to the forming gap by a wire rod feed mechanism, since the lengths of the first and the second straight parts are set on the basis of the feed amount, the lengths of the first and the second straight parts can be easily changed by adjusting the feed amount.
However, this prior invention is for winding a relatively small number of, for example, one or two wire rods. In a winding assembly of a rotating electrical machine which requires more winding members, after the winding step is ended, a step of mutually weaving the wound winding members is indispensable. Further, since the number of winding members wound at one winding step is small, in order to mutually weave more winding members at the weaving step, the number of times of weaving is required to be made large, the work time of the weaving step becomes long, and the work efficiency is low.
Besides, in the prior invention, an push-out member is used in order to successively push out the winding member wound on the turn plane from the turn plane. However, the extrusion by the push-out member is required to be performed by specially providing the push-out step after the turn step of the wire rod on the turn plane is ended, and the whole work time of the winding step becomes long by this push-out step, and the work efficiency becomes low.
Further, in the prior invention, in the case where lead wires are formed for plural winding members of the winding assembly, after the winding step of the winding assembly, it is necessary to provide an operation of joining the special lead wires to places of the wiring members where the lead wires are required.
A first object of this invention is to propose a new improved manufacturing method for a winding assembly of a rotating electrical machine in which the problems of the prior art are improved, and the weaving step in the prior invention is made unnecessary, or even if the weaving step is performed, the number of times of weaving at the weaving step can be decreased.
Besides, a second object of this invention is to propose a new improved manufacturing method for a winding assembly of a rotating electrical machine in which the problems of the prior art are improved, the weaving step of the prior invention is made unnecessary, or the number of times of weaving at the weaving step is decreased, and the push-out step by the push-out member in the prior invention is made unnecessary.
Besides, a third object of this invention is to propose a new improved manufacturing method for a winding assembly of a rotating electrical machine in which the problems of the prior art are improved, and the number of times of weaving in the prior invention is made unnecessary, or the number of times of weaving at the weaving step is decreased, and further, formation of the lead wire in the prior invention is performed in a winding step.
Further, a fourth object of the invention is to propose a new improved manufacturing apparatus for a winding assembly of a rotating electrical machine which can be used for at least the manufacturing method for the winding assembly of the rotating electrical machine corresponding to the first object.